Nine people died and dozens were seriously injured when two Red Line trains collided on June 22, 2009, near the Fort Totten station. Nearly three years later, as The Washington Examiner’s Kytja Weir first reported, Metro and three equipment manufacturers have finally admitted their culpability. However, while the confidential settlements reached in seven wrongful-death lawsuits spare both the transit agency and the victims’ families the high costs of litigation, they also allow Metro to avoid releasing any more details about the worst accident in its 36-year history.
In 2010, a highly critical report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board identified track circuit failures as the major cause of the Red Line crash. The report noted that Metro had previously ignored “parasitic oscillations” in 290 circuits, and that one in particular had been “failing consistently” since 1998. NTSB blamed Metro’s lack of a safety culture and its failure to maintain the automatic track system as contributing factors to the crash. Nonetheless, right after the NTSB released its report on the fatal crash, then Chairman Jim Graham insisted that the Metro Board could not have done anything to prevent it.
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The “stipulation to liability” made by Metro and the three companies that manufactured the track circuits, train tracking software, and a computerized warning system refutes Graham’s contention. But it also means that there will likely be no further public revelations about how Metro’s supposedly “fail-safe” systems failed so spectacularly at the same time. Two remaining lawsuits, filed on behalf of four other victims and their families, were scheduled to go to trial this month, but have been postponed until the fall. The fact that U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton issued a gag order on litigants last week is another indication that the public is still not being told the whole story.
Taxpayers who support Metro and passengers who ride the rails deserve to know the unvarnished truth. In a suit filed against its Boston insurance company, Metro admitted that the Red Line accident cost it more than $13 million from the loss of “more than six million Metrorail riders.” And that figure doesn’t take into account the latest settlements or the fact that Metro’s insurance premiums doubled after the crash. Since Metro receives federal funds, Congress has the fiduciary duty to find out how exactly how costly the Red Line crash really was. A public hearing on the issue would be the appropriate forum in which to require answers from Metro General Manager Richard Sarles.
